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Enlarge / We knew Sony was bullish about PC game launches in 2022, but we didn't think Spider-Man would be included. Great news for PC gamers. (credit: Sony / Insomniac / Nixxes)

On Thursday, Sony's latest game-filled "State of Play" presentation included fantastic news for PC gamers: Its critically acclaimed Marvel's Spider-Man is coming to Windows PCs on August 12. The news arrived shortly after a leak suggesting that Returnal and Sackboy: A Big Adventure are not only coming to PC this year, as well, but will include toggles to make them look and perform better than their PlayStation 5 versions.

The event was jam-packed with impressive-looking new games, though most of them have been given 2023 release dates (and everything shown on the upcoming PlayStation VR 2 platform is thus far undated, as that new peripheral still doesn't have a release date). As PC gaming enthusiasts, however, we want to start with the PC-specific news.

Why Sony's PC bullishness makes us believe today's leak

Marvel's Spider-Man launched on PlayStation 4 and PS4 Pro in September 2018 and landed near the top of our favorite games of that year. Its PC port, which we are still surprised to see, given what a PlayStation console sales driver it's been, will arrive on PC courtesy of Nixxes, a development studio known for some of the best console-to-PC ports of the past decade. Sony acquired Nixxes in early 2021, but up until today, that acquisition hadn't yet borne fruit, as Sony's other recent Windows game releases didn't credit Nixxes in any way.

Enlarge / We knew Sony was bullish about PC game launches in 2022, but we didn't think Spider-Man would be included. Great news for PC gamers. (credit: Sony / Insomniac / Nixxes)

On Thursday, Sony's latest game-filled "State of Play" presentation included fantastic news for PC gamers: Its critically acclaimed Marvel's Spider-Man is coming to Windows PCs on August 12. The news arrived shortly after a leak suggesting that Returnal and Sackboy: A Big Adventure are not only coming to PC this year, as well, but will include toggles to make them look and perform better than their PlayStation 5 versions.

The event was jam-packed with impressive-looking new games, though most of them have been given 2023 release dates (and everything shown on the upcoming PlayStation VR 2 platform is thus far undated, as that new peripheral still doesn't have a release date). As PC gaming enthusiasts, however, we want to start with the PC-specific news.

Why Sony's PC bullishness makes us believe today's leak

Marvel's Spider-Man launched on PlayStation 4 and PS4 Pro in September 2018 and landed near the top of our favorite games of that year. Its PC port, which we are still surprised to see, given what a PlayStation console sales driver it's been, will arrive on PC courtesy of Nixxes, a development studio known for some of the best console-to-PC ports of the past decade. Sony acquired Nixxes in early 2021, but up until today, that acquisition hadn't yet borne fruit, as Sony's other recent Windows game releases didn't credit Nixxes in any way.

Enlarge / White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha speaks alongside White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre during the daily press briefing at the White House on June 02, 2022 in Washington, DC. (credit: Getty | Kevin Dietsch)

COVID-19 vaccination for children ages 6 months to under five years—the only age group yet to be eligible for vaccination—is expected to get underway on June 21, White House COVID-19 response coordinator Ashish Jha said in a press briefing Thursday.

The Food and Drug Administration is now reviewing data from Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech on their respective vaccines for the young age group. The agency will convene its panel of independent expert advisors to review the data on June 15 and vote on whether the vaccines should be granted emergency use authorization.

If the panel votes in favor of authorization, the FDA will likely grant authorization quickly. Once that happens, shipments of federal supplies of the vaccines will begin going out to states for distribution. But, before they can go into little arms, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will need to have its own advisory committee meeting to review the data and vote on a recommendation. And for the final step, the CDC Director Rochelle Walensky will need to endorse the recommendation.

Enlarge (credit: System76)

HP released its Dev One Linux laptop today. Aimed at coders, the 14-inch clamshell comes at a lower price than previous Ubuntu-based HP clamshells.

Starting at $1,099, the Dev One begins to keep costs low by opting for an AMD, rather than Intel, CPU and skipping the discrete graphics card. HP's last Linux laptops, part of its ZBook workstation lineup, went well over $2,000 and offered up to Intel Xeon processors and Nvidia RTX GPUs.

The 14-incher weighs 3.24 lbs. (credit: System76)

Linux roots

The previous workstations used Ubuntu 20.04 preloaded with software packages aimed at data scientists. However, the Dev One runs Pop!_OS, an Ubuntu-based Linux distribution from System76.

Enlarge / Tiny samples of the Hypatia stone next to a small coin. Rare type Ia supernovas are some of the most energetic events in the universe. Researchers found a consistent pattern of 15 elements in the Hypatia stone, unlike anything in our solar system or in the Milky Way (credit: Jan Kramers)

In 1996, an archaeologist named Aly A. Barakat was doing fieldwork in an Egyptian desert and stumbled across an unusual shiny black pebble now known as the Hypatia stone (after Hypatia of Alexandria). Studies conducted over the last several years indicate that the stone is of extraterrestrial origin. And according to a recent paper published in the journal Icarus, the stone's parent body was likely born in the aftermath of a rare type Ia supernova explosion.

The  Hypatia stone was found in an area of southwest Egypt known for its Libyan Desert glass, produced by an extreme surface heating event, quite possibly a meteorite. The Hypatia stone may have also come from that impact, although more recent evidence suggests a comet would be a more likely parent body.

The University of Johannesburg's Jan Kramers and several colleagues have investigated the Hypatia stone for many years. Kramers compared the Hypatia stone's internal structure to a fruitcake: a poorly mixed dough forming the bulk of the pebble (mixed matrices), with the mineral grains lurking in the stone's inclusions representing the cherries and nuts. He likened the secondary substances in the stone's cracks to the flour dusting the gaps in a fruitcake.

Enlarge / A Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon spacecraft are ready to launch NASA's Crew-4 mission. (credit: Trevor Mahlmann)

NASA said this week that it plans to purchase five additional Crew Dragon missions from SpaceX to carry astronauts to the International Space Station.

Although the space agency's news release does not specifically say so, these may be the final flights NASA needs to keep the space station fully occupied into the year 2030. As of now, there is no signed international agreement to keep the station flying until then, but this new procurement sends a strong signal that the space agency expects the orbital outpost to keep flying that long.

The announcement also suggests that SpaceX will fly more than twice as many crews to the space station than the other partner in NASA's commercial crew program, Boeing. Under the new agreement, SpaceX would fly 14 crewed missions to the station on Crew Dragon, and Boeing would fly six during the lifetime of the station.